Oh, These Knees
It seems as far as I can remember that my knees have hurt me in some way or another. In high school I played football, lacrosse, and roller hockey and even then they weren’t perfect. Probably about a year ago my left knee started bothering me more than my right knee (which seems to always have been the worse one). Acting like a stereotypical man I assumed it would just get better on its own and that seeing a doctor would be a waste of time and money. Unfortunately, for me it never got better, in fact it started hurting more.
Fast-forward to about a month ago. It became clear to me that the worsening pain in my left knee would need to be addressed. Luckily, my team leader at work informed me of his orthopedic surgeon who just so happens to be part of the best orthopedic teams in the country. I’m speaking of Rosenberg Metcalf Cooley (RMC) the orthopedic clinic at Park City. Before I get into what’s wrong with my knees, here is a little info about RMC.
RMC is highly regarded and one of the best orthopedic clinics in the country. The doctors here do a lot of pro athlete surgeries. In fact, Dr. Metcalf and Dr. Cooley both worked on Tiger Woods’ knee after he tore his ACL at the PGA US Open in 2008 doing the ACL repair and two scopes.
My surgeon is Dr. Cooley. Not only is he a Harvard Medical School graduate but he is also the U.S. Ski and Snowboard team physician, as well as the physician for the Park City Olympic venue when the winter Olympics were here in 2002. Most people are nervous for surgery; however, knowing that I have the best doctors in the country doing this gives me a lot of reassurance.
RMC has two locations, one in Park City and one in Murray. My initial appointment was at the Murray office with Cooley a month ago. I went in obviously hurting and I expected to see the doctor for maybe all of three minutes which during that time he would just tell me I’d need to get an MRI. My experience was actually quite different. They started off by x-raying my knees at a bunch of different angles to make sure there weren’t any bone fractures. After this, Cooley came into my room and pulled up the x-rays on a computer and gave me a play-by-play of what he saw and didn’t see from the x-rays. Finally, he had me lay on the bed while he worked my knees, feeling for grinding and listening to what kind of sounds my knees made. I’m not sure what he did to my left knee but pushing on a particular area and having pull my knee toward my chest caused it to really hurt, this is how he determined that I have a torn medial meniscus. My right knee has what is called chondromalacia patellae, or softening of the articular cartilage of the knee-cap.  After my diagnosis had been made he told me about the surgery and that I could do just the left one or he could do both knees at the same time but it was really up to me. He was really informative and I didn’t get the sense that he was rushing to get out of my patient room to see the next person waiting so I really had a good experience here.
The earliest surgery time for me was May 3rd, as I’m writing this means its tomorrow (check in at 9 AM, surgery at 10:30 AM). That is also eleven days prior to the Hawaii vacation. I decided that even though Hawaii was two weeks after this surgery date/time that I would go ahead and do both my knees. My thought was that at some point I’d probably need the right one worked on so I’d rather just do them both at the same time and get it taken care of now, especially while I’m young(ish).
Well, it’s 11:19 PM and I have to get up early for this! Since I am going to be under anesthesia I needed a ride home, lucky for me though, Carrie was awesome enough to take work off and do it. Well, bed time for me, wish me luck. By the way, below is a random picture of one of the x-rays I snapped. It really means nothing, I just think its cool.
